


Can Bullets Sound like Bach?

by The_Procrastinating_Writer



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-22
Updated: 2018-07-22
Packaged: 2019-06-14 07:23:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,874
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15383631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Procrastinating_Writer/pseuds/The_Procrastinating_Writer
Summary: Arthur was only fifteen and a better fighter than most seasoned military men. Shortly after his birthday, he got a special assignment of guarding the Secretary of war's son, Merlin.





	1. Dry Eyes

Arthur Pendragon was never one to cry. The last time he did was at his mother's funeral, an event that happened when he was seven.

After he sobbed his little heart out for the last time he was sorely beaten by his father for crying. Even at that age, he was aware enough to know,vshowing any signs of pain, including crying would only lead to a harsher punishment.

"Crying is for women and weak men. I am going to train you so you are neither." His voice was devoid of any sympathy or regret and his reasoning was irrefutable in Arthur's mind.

Now he was a fifteen-year-old who's seen too much of the worst of humanity to get emotionally riled up about anything.

He's heard about every egregious act the Germans have done. Even saw a concentration camp once while on an observation mission with his father. He saw the walking skeletons with sunken eyes. He smelled the rotting and burning corpses. He heard the wails for a building he never intends to enter. He was thirteen at the time. He got sick after the trip and could not eat, sleep or get the smell of burned corpses out of his nose for months, but he did not cry.

He's had to do things that were monstrous and didn't cry then either. Once he was ordered to eliminate an entire family because the father refused to give information about their targets whereabouts. He remembers hearing the man's desperate pleads in French, he understood the perfectly but pretended not to.

The mother was the first to go, she tried to shield her two children with he body. She was hunched over and died to hug them and making false promises of their safety.

The daughter was the next because Arthur could see she could become a threat if left alone for too long. There was a glint in her eye that signified danger. She died glaring defiantly at the blond haired boy only two years her senior.

The son went shortly after her, he stayed by his sister's fallen body instead of running. Arthur still would have caught and shot him, but killing him right next to his sister as he wailed made Arthur feel dirty. The whole thing made Arthur feel dirty, but the son especially so. The boy, only six, died wailing.

The father at this point was so distraught he didn't try to fight or flee. Death was probably a welcoming thought for him. Afterwards he couldn't look at a mirror or his hands for weeks, but he never shredded a single tear for the family of four. He was fourteen at the time.

His normal feelings of numbness worked well for him. He has never gone to a private school so there were no friends to have emotions for. And while he went around with a few girls, the closest to a feeling he's gotten with any of them is the euphoria of orgasming. 

Arthur was normally comfortable not feeling. He's learned to work with it, and if needed he can fake any one of them very well. Actual emotions were frightening to him, all but one of them.

In the rare instances, Arthur ever needed to feel something, there was one emotion that was allowed by Uther Pendragon.

Anger.

He allowed, even encouraged Arther to resent or outright hate the Germans who started the second bloody world war. He was allowed to slander his sister's name on account that she eloped with an SSR soldier. He was allowed to get angry about all but three things. The queen, the country, and Uther Pendragon.

Arthur followed his father's commandments in public and when he was around. In private he cursed the royal family and their general uselessness.

The blue bloods have about as much influence as his father just because they were correctly inbred. At least his father got his respect because he saved his comrades and fought bravely during the First World War.

He also would curse the damn country and its bureaucracy to hell. Thanks to parliament's hesitations and indecisiveness the nation was mostly defenseless and not ready for war when Germany blew up most of London. 

He remembered the shaking of the flat, and the quick glances at the fires the lit up London. The screaming outside; his own fathers yells that teeter between commands of a general ordering his battalion to move and a civilian man who was woken up to the alarms and just wanted him and his son to live another day. There was so much rumble afterwards, and Arthur wanted to look away. He also knew many were injuries or killed by the smell. The air was thick with blood, dust, and despair.

He cursed his father the most though, for forcing him into a role he never wanted. The tool that is used when all else fails. A tool that Urther began to forge long before the war, but tempered using the dust and blood left in the wake of the Biltz.

His father ordered him to stare at the destruction and death. He wanted Arthur to burn every moment of this into his head. He wanted Arthur to never forget or forgive the country that did this to he beloved city.

Now Arthur knew what he was. He knew ever since he was thirteen and ordered by Urther to sneak around a know fascist gather place. He was a soldier that was disguised as a boy.


	2. Voluntarily Numb

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Merlin was loved by everyone. Witty, kind, and loyal, everyone he knew went out of their way to protect him.

Merlin isn't one to cry. Crying will just give everyone another reason to suffocate him. The last time he cried was when he was twelve. The Blitz had just happened in London, thank god his family went on holiday to the country, and he cried because he worried for the house, the help, and every other person in London.

After that incedent, it took him days to convince his mother not to send him to a therapist. Everyone around him always worried about him. Maybe because he was thinner than most, maybe because he showed the whole array of emotions unlike most other boys, maybe because the was Balnor's son.

The possibilities are endless really.

When he asked his friends and family why they were so concerned about him, the consensus was that he was just an all-around wonderful boy. One of his friends even said he was too wonderful and did not deserve to have to live through a fucking war. 

As much as Merlin loved everyone, he still wished they wouldn't be so overbearing. The same friend who said he was too wonderful also once beat a boy bloody after he teased Merlin about his ears. 

Some days he went as far as locking himself in the house's library so he could have some peace and quiet. He's been home more than not these days because of the war and his father's slight paranoia. 

A paranoia everyone seems to share. It only applies to Merlin too. Everyone fears someone will come in a carry Merlin away like he was a princess from a fairytale. When he goes to school at least one of his friends follows him around at all times as a sort of security detail. 

Joshua, a member of this group actually got injuries because a German sympathizer tried to attack Merlin and he intervened. This was a semester ago and his father never let him go back after the winter holiday. The news about the attacked shook everyone, especially Balinor and Hunith the most, it was their son who was attacked.

Of course they were eternity grateful to Joshua and his parents, the paid for the hospital and everything. Merlin apologizes to Joshua profusely even though the boy he was apologizing to pointed out he had nothing to be sorry for.

Merlin still felt guilty as shit so he found the boy that hurt Joshua and ensured his expulsion and his family's excommunication from polite British society. It did not take much for him to do the second thing, the family sympathized and even supported Nazis. Needless to say, Merlin was discussed by them and took great pleasure in exposing them.

Merlin was actual, despite his friendly attitude, quite vicious and conniving when faced with an enemy. His mother swears he inherits it from his father. A statement neither father nor son denied. 

That was why it infuriated him so that people went out of their way to protect him when he was capable of protecting himself. Some days Merlin wondered if he exposed secrets about each of his father's advisories, would people be scared of him? Would it be enough for him to finally get all the independence most boys have?

It wouldn't be that hard to do. He would just have to make a few deductions and follow it up and take photos as proof. Maybe he should become a journalist. Give up on the whole medical thing, which was giving him a headache and more anxiety than is normal for a boy in wartime. 

His father wanted him to go into politics, but he was always fascinated by the human body. His father, though initially surprised at his choice for a future career path, he accepted it and moved on. One of his best traits in Merlin's option and the reason he and Hunith were still together.

Merlin wished he inherited that trait. Instead, he was the type to study a dog's stomach for days without sleep.

More than once Lance or Gwaine had to drag him out of his "office" (a forgotten room on the second floor of his city home). His mother used his negligence of self as a reason of her continued babying of him. 

It wasn't that Merlin didn't care about his health. It's just there were so many more  important and interesting things to do. Many of his experiments and studies were time sensitive. This was especially true when it came to his dissections. He was notorious for stealing the heads and innards of animals butchered by the house's cooks.

Since they were not properly preserved the decay time was short and the butchering only happened every other Sunday Merlin always wanted to make the most of his time. The butchering was always later in the afternoon, so he would have to work late into the night and ignore supper. Then there were his notes he had to proof read, and cross examine with notes from other times he studied the same thing.

Merlin has been swiping heads and guts since he was ten so he had binders full of notes. Every time he found something different, interesting, or not mentioned in his textbook he filled a whole page on his discovery. Then if he found something similar to a body part he found in a previous dissection he would go through all his binders to find the sheet or sheets on that body part and compare and contrast. This is what adds the most time to his examination and the reason he doesn't sleep for the next few days.

He knew he lived in a bubble, and created another bubble in the form of his office. He just did not care. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Constructive criticisms and comments are welcomed.

**Author's Note:**

> Constructive criticisms and comments are welcomed.


End file.
